Brand New Eyes
by MisguidedGhostTwilighter
Summary: A series of one-shots, each inspired by a track off Paramore's album, Brand New Eyes. Rated M just in case, because I have no idea what's going to happen in later chapters.
1. Careful

Brand New Eyes

Summary: 

A series of one-shots, each inspired by a track off Paramore's album, Brand New Eyes.

One: Careful 

Rosalie's POV:

No matter how many times I did this, I would never get used to it. Not ever. The thrill would never fade; I'd never get bored of the warm, tingling feeling the spotlights left on my skin as they danced across the stage; I'd never get sick of the noise ringing in my ears: the screaming crowd, begging for an encore, and the left over buzz and throb of the final guitar chord and the last, strong drum beat.

It was all something that I'd experienced countless times before over the past two years, but every time it felt new and fresh, like the first time I'd realised that my dream had come true, that I'd found my haven in the ultimate rebellion.

It was all so perfect, and so far from my old life as a rich kid. As the rest of the band launched into the intro for Paramore's _Careful_, and the crowd whooped for the encore song that they knew so well, I couldn't help but laugh with pure ecstasy. The grin was still wide on my face as I belted out the meaningful lyrics of my favourite song.

"I settled down, a twisted up frown,

Disguised as a smile, well,

You would have never known!"

The lyrics reminded me so much of my old feelings of turmoil, and my new feelings of elation; they also reminded me of my brother and sister, and the uncontrollable exasperation and anxiety and hatred I felt towards them.

"I had it all, but not what I wanted,

'Cause hope for me was a place uncharted, and over grown!"

When I'd been a rich kid, living the 'perfect' life, with 'perfect' clothes, I'd wanted nothing more than to break free; the explore a land where my 'amazing' 'talented' 'brilliant' father had never dared to tread: I'd wanted to be a rock star.

"You'd make your way in,

I'd resist you just like this:

You can't tell me to feel!

The truth never set me free,

So I did it myself..."

And I did; I did all of this myself: I taught myself to sing and I walked out of town. I left, discarding my past and my old life by the roadside somewhere between my father's mansion and the nearby city.

"You can't be too careful anymore,

When all that is waiting for you,

Won't come any closer!

You've got to reach out a little more,

More, More,

More, More..."

Memories of my brother, Jasper, flashed before my eyes: he'd rebelled, but uselessly. He hadn't aimed for anything, hadn't fought for anything. He'd just sunk further and further down into nothing. He gave up school, like I did. He left home, like I did. But, after he did those things, he just... stopped. He moved in with a crowd of guys his age, and they spent their days watching shit TV and drinking beer, and they spent their nights out on the town, picking up sleazy girls and getting drunk.

"Open your eyes,

Like I opened mine!

It's only the real world,

A life you will never know!"

I always imagined singing those words to him; screaming them in his drunken, unshaven face. I wanted to give him a kick up the ass and yell at him to get his life on track and figure out who he was going to be. Because I knew he could be something amazing: he'd been a really promising actor, before he gave up everything. He was wasting himself every time he got wasted; I could feel my awesome, hilarious brother slipping away from em every second, and it made me want to cry out in pain and anguish.

"Shifting your weight,

To throw off the pain,

Well, you can ignore it,

But only for so long!

You look like I did,

You resist me just like this:

You can't tell me to heal!

And it hurts remembering

How it felt to shut down..."

That verse made me think of my sister, Bella, and the downward spiral of her life: she was still with my parents – if they deserve that title – and she was lost. She had no aims, and so she was conforming; trying desperately to fit in to my parents' fancy world of parties, when she was the only one of us who never could. She felt the pressure of the pretty dresses that didn't quite fit her, and the make-up that didn't suit her face, so she starved herself. Slowly, her body and mind were going to consume themselves. When I saw her, I saw myself many years ago, before I figured out where I was headed and what I wanted. Except, on her, it was magnified, because she had nowhere to go, and no way to find out what her path was, never mind get onto it and start waking. She was even more wasted than my brother, and I felt like I was already mourning her death.

"You can't be too careful anymore,

When all that is waiting for you,

Won't come any closer!

You've got to reach out a little more,

More, more,

More, more..."

I realised that I was crying them; my eyes were wet and warm with tears that slithered down my cheeks. My throat felt choked and it ached, but I kept singing; I kept singing for my brother and my sister, because, somehow, I felt like they were here, watching me, and they needed to hear the words.

"The truth never set me free,

The truth never set me free,

The truth never set me free,

So, I'll do it myself..."

My weeping eyes scanned the crowd, and then they froze. They were here. Jasper and Bella: they were here, staring up at me. It felt like there was a spotlight on them, not me; I stared into their eyes, which were the same colour as mine, and I sang the last chorus to them and them alone. There was no audience here anymore; it was just us three, with these words and these tears.

"You can't be too careful anymore,

When all that is waiting for you

Won't come any closer!

You've got to reach out

Can't be too careful anymore,

When all that is waiting for you

Won't come any closer!

You've got to reach out

More, more,

More, more,

More."

On the last word, my eyes drifted shut. That word meant everything; it meant every feeling in the entire song and so much more; it was a plea to my siblings to save themselves; it was a promise to myself to live the best I could for the three of us; it was an apology for ever time I'd ever done them wrong.

It was my whole heart, all wrapped up in one word. And, as my eyes opened again to the applause of the crowd and the anxious, sympathetic smiles of my band mates, I realised that I'd just given my heart to the entire world.

A/N:

Hey. I hope you liked that. I'll post the chapter inspired by _Ignorance_ soon. Oh, and I know the ending doesn't tell you what happens next, and there are two reasons for that: One, the song cuts off at the end, so we don't know what happens to the people that the song's about; two, if I'd carried on writing it would have ruined it. So, it's down to you to imagine what happens next.


	2. Ignorance

Brand New Eyes

A/N:

Thank you to Jade SprattMaryJAlice for being the first person to review.

Oh, btw, guys, this part contains non-canon Bella and swearing. Just so ya know. Oh, and also, this part is really long. It killed my fingers and my eyes and my brain to write it, but I couldn't have made it any shorter.

Enjoy it, please.

Two: Ignorance

Bella's POV:

He didn't even look at me. The bastard didn't even look at me. He just stood there, acting all high and mighty, like it was all my fault; like he didn't even know me. Bastard.

I went all the way down there, to La Push, even though my truck was broken so I had to walk the whole way. I walked all the way down there, in the rain, to see him; to try and sort things out with him. Well, there's no way I'm doing anything for him again; I'm not wasting any energy or time on him. I won't even waste my strength picking up the phone to him.

Oh, look, the phone's ringing now. I glanced at the caller ID; it was Alice, not Jacob. Bastard; he hasn't phoned me to beg me to forgive him. That son-of-a-bitch. He deserves a slap, right across his precious, pretty face.

I picked up the phone. I didn't even have a chance to say 'hello', before Alice's high-pitched, excited voice was trilling away in my ear.

"Hey, Bella, I've got the most awesomely brilliantly fantastic idea! It'll be so-o-o cool! Oh, Bella, please, please, please say you'll come! Oh, it's going to be so fun! I'm so glad you're going to be coming with me!, Oh-"

"Alice!" I shouted, cutting her off. "Coming where? I haven't even agreed to it yet."

"Oh, don't say no, Bella. Please," she squeaked, disappointed.

"Alice, calm down and speak slowly. Where do you want me to go with you?"

"To the Bluebird, tonight."

The Bluebird was Alice's favourite place to go: loads of trendy, artistic people who wanted to have some stupid fun hung out there. They were always holding events designed to embarrass everyone who took part and reduce even the calmest person into fits of giggles.

"Okay. Why do you want me to go to the Bluebird?"

"Because, they are having a karaoke night! But, it's more than a karaoke night! You have to invite somebody else who you want to say something to, and then tell them through the medium of song! Oh, Bella, it's gonna be-"

"Alice! You're becoming incoherent."

"Sorry. But, Bella, you can invite Jacob and sort things out with him through song!"

"Like I want to sort things out with that prick," I growled.

"What? Okay, whatever. You hate him now, so kick his ass through the medium of music! Oh, Bella, please, just come, please, please, please, please! I promise, I'll even spend a whole day in that dingy Indie record store with you if you come! Please, please, please!"

"Yes. I'll come. I never said I wouldn't."

"Oh, yay! Yes, yes, yes! Oh, Bella, thank you, thank you so-"

"But now you've promised to spend a day in 'that dingy Indie record store' with me. How does Saturday sound?"

"Oh, shit," she said, sounding deflated for a moment. Then she cheered back up again. "Oh, Bella, this is so fantastic! Hey, I'll pick you up in twenty minutes, okay?"

"Sure."

"Okay, bye!"

"See ya."

I put the phone down and sighed. How the hell was I going to get Jacob to the Bluebird? It was about as far from his scene as it was possible to be. That mother fucker was definitely not trendy or artistic, so there was no chance in he- Wait a second! Renesmee! Of course; he's got the hugest crush on her, and she spends every night at the Bluebird! He'll definitely be there; I don't even have to invite him! Ha! This situation was so perfect, I could barely believe it!

I glanced at the clock on my wall: I had just over fifteen minutes to get ready before Alice got here. And, actually, with the speed Alice does things, it was more like twelve minutes. So, I changed out of my purple t-shirt into a red, fitted vest-top with _screw you_ written across it in white letters. I then changed form my scruffy blue jeans into my green skinny jeans, and slipped a green zip-up hoodie on over my vest top. I just managed to get my red high-top converse on when the tinkling sound of the doorbell rang through the house, followed by the sound of Alice's bracelet's jangling together as she rapped her tiny knuckles quickly on the door.

"I'm coming!" I yelled as I ran down the stairs and along the short hallway. I kicked my dad's scruffy trainers out of the way and started to unlock the door. There were five bolts, because my mother had OCD and so, when she'd lived her many years ago, she'd insisted that my dad put them on. Since then, he hadn't removed them. Like the faded yellow paint in the kitchen, it had stayed, as a depressing memory of Charlie's long-gone youth and wife.

By the time I pulled the door open, Alice was jumping from foot to foot in impatience and excitement.

"Bella, Bella, Bella!" she trilled as she snatched my hand into hers and pulled me down the driveway to her yellow Porsche.

Once she'd tugged me inside the tiny sports car, I began fiddling with the stereo. It was a rule of mine: always check what anyone has in their stereo before turning it on. I guess you could say I was a music snob: strictly rock and alternative music. The CD inside Alice's player was decorated to look like the top of a pink-iced cake: Kate Nash's album, Made of Bricks. I figured that was alright, so I pressed the 'play' button and then the button that skipped onto the nest track, because I despised the first song on that album.

The opening piano chords of 'Foundations' tumbled out of the speakers, and I turned to face Alice.

"So," she said, as we accelerated smoothly down the road. "What are you singing, and who have you invited?"

"_Ignorance_, by Paramore, and I've invited Jacob."

"Oh, brilliant!" Alice squealed. "I'm singing _We Get On _by Kate Nash, and I've invited-"

"Jasper," I said, at the same time that she said the same thing.

"Yes!" she squealed. "But, God, I'm so nervous! I mean, what if he-"

"Alice! Calm down."

That was something I had to say a lot; I didn't even think about it anymore. In fact, those two words – calm down – had been the first words I'd said to her when we first met.

It was at school, two years ago, in a PE lesson. I'd just arrived, in the middle of the semester, and it sucked. I hadn't really made many friends, because at that time, when I was a junior, I'd been really sulky. I'd refused to speak to anyone who wasn't as alternative as me, and before lunch break I'd already got a reputation as a bitch.

So, I was in PE and I was dreading it. I sucked at sports – still do – and with everybody hating me, I'd been pretty sure that they would love this opportunity to take the piss. We'd got a supply teacher – a young guy called Mr Bruton – and, according to all the girls, he was really hot. Alice had been sitting next to me, on the sports field, as we'd waited for him to arrive so the lesson could start. Well, as next to me as anybody could be, when I'd refused to have less than three feet between me and any other human being. Of course, she'd been chattering away to everyone about how hot Mr Bruton was, and how excited she was, and all this and all that. After about five minutes, her high pitched, loud voice had really, really started to piss me off. So, in a burst of frustration, I'd spoken, out loud, to her.

"Calm down!" I'd cried out in irritation. "Just calm the fuck down!"

And I'm not going to say that from that day forth we were bets friends, because we definitely weren't. For months we'd hated each others guts. I'd avoided her and her friends like the plague, and her friends had bitched about me to anyone that would listen. But, then, after about four months of this, we'd been forced to work together on an art project. We'd hated it; I'd responded to her every word with a sharp, harsh remark and she'd eventually broken down in tears. I'd felt quite proud. After that day, we'd fought like cats; no, like two wolves warring over territory. Gone were the snide remarks and subtle remarks; it had been full on war, with arguments waged across the cafeteria and classrooms. I'd started to enjoy our conflict; so much so that, instead of just waiting until we bumped into each other, I began to hunt her down.

Eventually, we'd ended up alone together in the toilets after school. She'd gone in there to touch up her makeup; I'd followed her to take the piss. The argument got so heated that I had splashed her with water and she'd scribbled across my face with eyeliner. I'd snatched it from her hand and drew a fat alien on her cheek; she'd screamed and chucked her face powder all over my t-shirt.

And then she'd started laughing. And I'd had to join in, because – no matter how annoying I'd found it before hand – her melodic giggle was completely contagious. We'd laughed until our sides ached and our throats were thick and heavy. And, when we stopped, we'd look up at each other and fall back into fits of giggles again.

After that day, we were best friends. When we both turned eighteen, we got a tattoo each of a fat alien. I could see Alice's now, as we drove along towards the Bluebird. It was on the side of her arm, which was visible because she was wearing a short-sleeved, floaty, green mini dress.

We pulled up outside the Bluebird just as the weak Forks sunlight slipped behind a grey cloud. The front of the Bluebird was painted with an intricate forest scene. In the foreground of it, the focus of the painting was a bluebird, beside which the blue, swirling sign was printed: The Bluebird Club.

As we walked up towards the doors, I could hear the sound of many voices talking, glass clinking and music playing in the background.

"The karaoke starts in two minutes," Alice told me. "We're just in time."

I didn't reply, because we'd just walked through the doors and I was searching the room. Searching for Jacob. I hoped he was here because I couldn't wait to kick his ass. I didn't want to see his face; didn't want to see him smiling in the same way that he used to smile when we'd been best friends. I didn't miss him, honest, I didn't.

Alice was searching, too. She was looking for Jasper, and she found him. His shaggy, sandy blonde hair was visible on the other side of the room, where he was stood with his sister, Rosalie.

"He's here!" Alice squeaked in my ear.

"I know!" I squeaked back, mimicking her tone of voice.

We didn't get time to discuss it further, because a young man in a sharp suit stepped up to the mike on stage.

"Evening, guys!" he said. "It's time for the karaoke to begin. If you haven't already signed up, the book is over there, in the corner. Our first singer is-" he looked at a piece of paper in his hand "-Adelle Nutting! Come on up, Adelle!"

A short girl with ginger hair stepped onto the stage and started singing. It was a song by Erin K and Tash. Whilst she sung her son in a high pitched, nasally voice, I followed Alice over to where the singing-up book was. We put our names down, and the songs we wanted to sing, as the bottom of a list of three people.

Two badly sung songs later, and it was my turn. I got a buzz of satisfaction at the sight of the expression on Jacob's face when he heard my name: shocked, and just a little anxious. He knew this night was for getting messages across; he was pretty sure that I wanted to get a message across to him.

The mike felt light and comfortable in my hand, like all the other mikes I'd held at various talent shows over the past year. I clear my throat quietly as the furious, fast power chords that were the intro to _Ignorance_ kicked in.

"If I'm a bad person, you don't like me.

Well, I guess I'll make my own way.

It's a circle,

A mean cycle.

I can't excite you anymore."

As I sung that last line, I glanced up at Jacob. It was a great reference to all the times I'd caught him with a hard-on around me, and I swear I saw him blush.

"Where's your gavel? Your jury?

What's my offence this time?

You're not a judge but if you're gonna judge me,

Well, sentence me to another life."

I didn't want to make it to obvious yet that this was directed at Jacob; I wanted to keep him wondering if he was just paranoid, or if I was singing to him. It was great; I felt like I had so much power, because there was no way he could ever do this to me. He sounded like a dying cat when he sung, so there was no way he would embarrass himself by signing up for karaoke.

"Don't wanna hear your sad songs,

I don't wanna feel your pain."

I looked at him briefly as I sung those two lines, because they were a reminder of all the times he'd cried and begged me to be his girlfriend. He blushed a little more, and I couldn't help but smile.

"When you swear it's all my fault,

'Cause you know we're not the same.

We're not the same.

Oh, we're not the same."

Many times he'd accused me of just going against him and denying that I loved him purely because I liked being contrary; purely because he was so honest and I was so very different to him.

I turned my glare full onto him as I sung these next few lines, throwing them out with vehemence that scared even me.

"Yeah, the friends who stuck together,

We wrote our names in blood!"

And we had done: we'd scrawled our names on the wall of his garage in fake blood that we'd found in an old practical joke set of his. I wished, now, that I could write my name in his own blood; that I could tear his heart out and drain its contents into an ink pot. Not because I wanted his heart for my own; not because of that, honest.

"But I guess you can't accept that the change is good,

It's good,

It's good."

I emphasised the 'good', because I wanted him to know how good it was to be free of him; how good it was to not have to look at his face and his abs...

"Well, you treat me just like another stranger!

Well, it's nice to meet you sir,

I guess I'll go,

I best me on my way out!"

I sung those words with even more fury: fury at him for being such a bastard and fury at me for letting myself think about his abs when I'm angry with him.

"Well, you treat me just like another stranger!

Well, it's nice to meet you sir,

I guess I'll go,

I best me on my way out!

Ignorance is your new best friend,

Ignorance is your new best friend!"

I was full on glowering at him now, and he stared right back at me, looking scared and embarrassed and... regretful? Was that regret that I saw there? Was it? I hoped so; I wanted him back. No I didn't! I didn't, I didn't!

"This is the best thing that could have happened," I sung, but I felt like I was only trying to convince myself.

"Any longer and I wouldn't have made it.

It's not a war, no, it's not a rapture.

I'm just a person, but you can't take it!"

I felt like he should be singing that last line to me; like he should be screaming it in _my _face, instead of the other way round. He was just a person after all. Was he not allowed to react badly to being rejected? To being betrayed and humiliated?

"The same tricks that, that once fooled me,

They won't get you anywhere.

I'm not the same kid from your memory.

Well, now I can fend for myself."

Again, it was almost as though I was shouted at myself. Those words should be directed at me; I deserved this hatred, not him. Not him.

Could he see it in my face? Could he see my fury wavering? Could he see my hatred turning inwards, towards myself? Did he know?

Yes, I realised. He did know, and he could see. I couldn't sing this anymore; couldn't sing this song that no longer meant a thing. So I dropped the mike, to a chorus of shocked gasps, and jumped down off the stage. I ran towards Jacob, and I pulled his warm hand into mine, and I said:

"I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry."

He just looked at me. I couldn't read his face, so I carried on.

"I'm sorry for leading you on for all that time. I'm sorry for saying yes then saying no in front of everyone else. I'm sorry for being a needy, self centred bitch. I cared about other people's opinions more than I cared about you, and that was so fucking stupid because you are the best thing that ever happened to me. I'm a dumbass bitch, and I just loved it all. I loved the fact that you were chasing me; loved the fact that everybody said I could do better than an immature boy. But they were wrong. They were all wrong. I should have been the one chasing you, not the other way round. I'm sorry. I'm so fucking sorry."

There were tears tumbling down my cheeks now, and I wished he would brush them away with his thumb and kiss me.

"Can you ever forgive me?" I whispered. "Please?"

He looked at me for five seconds, but it felt like forever. I knew he didn't have to make any decision; he didn't have to think about it. His mind was already made up. I was already dying inside before he said the word, because I knew it was coming.

"No," he said. "No."

A/N:

Congratulations, if you managed to read all of that and make it down here! I hope you liked it. Please review.


	3. Playing God

Brand New Eyes

A/N: 

Hey. Thanks to everyone who read and reviewed.

Hope you like this part. It's another Bella POV (sorry for the repetition) but the part after this one won't be.

Three: Playing God

Bella's POV:

He's never happy. It's always: Bella, that colour doesn't suit you; Bella, stop scowling; Bella, stop mumbling; Bella, stop eating pop tarts; Bella, I don't want you talking to him; Bella this; Bella that.

He's always moaning and complaining and controlling my life. At first, I thought it was kind of sweet that he wanted to look out me; then I got a little peeved that he was so overprotective, but I thought it was just a phase and it would pass; now, I've had enough.

I can't just say that to him, though, because in an argument he will always beat me, hands down. It has to be a big gesture; something that will be clear in its indirectness, because the only languages he understands are cryptic-ness and his own voice.

This is why I'm crouching in a tree outside his window right now, at one-thirty on a Saturday, with his sister Alice. The plan, which Alice and I came up with in a triple science lesson, has already been implemented. Now, we just have to wait for him to walk into his room and set the plan in motion. And, once the chain of events has kicked off, he won't be able to stop it. It will drive him crazy, and it'll get the message across. Perfect.

"Remind me how this is going to work?" I whisper to Alice. She was one who thought up most of the plan; I just added the personal touches, like the song.

"Okay," Alice squeaks. She's so excited that she's shaking, and her bird-like voice trembles as she speaks. "Edward will walk into his room in approximately three minutes. Then, he will of course walk straight over to his stereo and press play, expecting to hear the Mozart-" Alice shuddered "-CD that he left in there this morning. However, he won't; he will here the song you chose, which was..."

"_Playing God_, by Paramore."

"Yes. Then, thanks to the technical genius of Emmett, it will be impossible for the CD to be stopped or paused, or for the stereo to be turned off. Event he volume control is frozen on full blast. Of course, Edward will be really cheesed off now. However, here's the best bit: all his fiddling with the stereo controls will trigger the lyrics of the song to flash up on the screen of his laptop, as well as on his phone and TV. He won't be able to ignore the message. It gets even better, though: the song is stuck on repeat, and – after it's played through once on the stereo – the song will also start blasting from the laptop speakers.

Then, when he's furious and confused and throwing a major hissy fit-"

"As usual," I cut in.

"As usual," Alice agreed, laughing. "When he's throwing one of his usual girly fits, that's when we make our presence known, by knocking on the window. You will then stick a post-it note on the glass that says: _We're over, 'cos you suck and you wouldn't stop playing God, love Bella x._"

"Oh!" I gasp, suddenly getting another idea. "I could spend the rest of the day here, with you, ignoring him and listening to _Playing God _and various other songs that he hates!"

"Yes!" Alice exclaims. "High five, Bella; this is awesome!"

"I know!" I say, giving my little pixie friend and high five.

"Oh, shh, he's coming!" Alice whispers.

We both fall silent and huddle together behind the leaves of the tree, preparing to watch the hilarious action unfold.

Edward walks into his room and, as Alice predicted, walks straight over to his stereo. I struggle to hold back fits of giggles at the confused, and then disgusted look on his face as the intro to _Playing God_ tumbles full blast out of the speakers.

He immediately jabbed the stop button, but it didn't work.

"_Can't make my own decisions,_

_Or make any with precision._

_Well, maybe you should tie me up,_

_So I don't go where you don't want me"_I hear Hayley Williams singing as Edward frantically presses the stop and pause buttons, with no success.

The screen of the laptop lights up, where the lyrics to _Playing God_ are printed on a Microsoft Word document in massive yellow letters. Edward looks over at the laptop, and I see the confused frown on his face, followed by anxiety at the possible realisation.

"He's figuring it out," Alice murmured to me. I nodded and grinned back.

"_You say that I been changing,_

_That I'm not just simply aging, _

_Well, how could that be logical?_

_Just keep on cramming ideas down my throat." _

He's given up on trying to turn to music off now; he is standing in front of the laptop, his eyes scanning over the song lyrics. Horror sweeps across his face, and I feel a pang of sympathy and sadness: no matter how cruel he's been to me, he still cares; he still doesn't want to lose me.

"_You don't have to believe me, _

_But the way I, way I see it, _

_Next time you point a finger _

_I might have to bend it back,_

_Or break it, break it off. _

_Next time you point a finger, I'll point you to the mirror." _

Is that enough, I wonder? Do I have to force him to listen to the song anymore? I've got my message across; surely I can put him out of his misery now? Do I really need to be so cruel?

"_If God's the game that you're playing,_

_Then we must get more acquainted, _

_Because it has to be so lonely, _

_To be the only one who's holy." _

He looks at the window now, and he sees me; he sees my wide eyes staring at him through the leaves, and I see that his eyes are brimming with tears. Oh, God, what have I done? He wasn't playing God, I realise; he was just doing what he thought was right. He didn't know how much I hated it, because I never told him; I left it this long and I never tried to straighten it out. Oh, God, I'm a horrible person.

"_It's just my humble opinion,_

_But it's one that I believe in._

_You don't deserve a point of view,_

_If the only thing you see is you."_

I don't deserve a point of view; I've been playing God. I've been judging him when he was only ever trying to be good to me. I mouth "Sorry," to him, and a single tear tumbles down his cheek.

I want to jump down form the tree and run into the house and hug him and apologise. But Alice's hand his on my shoulder, and her eyes are staring fiercely into mine.

"Don't, Bella!" she says.

"Why not?" I retort, shrugging her off. "Why shouldn't I go in there and comfort him?"

"Because he's tricking you, Bella! I've seen him do it countless times before, to countless other girls. Every time he's tricked them like this and promised to change; every time he's let them down time and time again; every time they've ended up crying on my shoulder. I don't want that to happen to you, Bella. You're better than that."

"Yes. I am better than that. I'm good enough to sort him out, Alice; good enough to make _him _better. He just needs someone to show him how to behave. I won't come crying on your shoulder, because I won't have anything to cry over."

I climb down the tree and dash round to the front door of the house. It's already unlocked, so I walk straight through and job up the stairs. As I throw open the door to Edward's room, the most appropriate part of the song is playing:

"_This is the last second chance._

_(I'll point you to the mirror)_

_I'm half as good as it gets__._

_(I'll point you to the mirror)_

_I'm on both sides of the fence._

_(I'll point you to the mirror)_

_Without a hint of regret__, _

_I'll hold you to it__." _

I walk across to Edward and wrap my arms around him. His hands lock together behind my back; as I look over his shoulder, I see Alice smiling in the tree outside. She doesn't know I can see; she doesn't know that I now know that, however many differences her and her brother have, she will always love him and she will always hate to see him cry.

I pull out of Edward's embrace, place my hands on his shoulders, and look seriously into his eyes.

"Right, Edward. I won't you to listen to me now, okay? You screw up again, or do something that is out of order, I'll tell you. I'm not going to sit back and let you screw us both over. Okay? Next time you point a finger," I say, just as Hayley sings it, "I'll point you to the mirror."

A/N: 

I hope you like that. I didn't plan it; this was just the way it happened as I listened to the song and wrote this. Cos, trust me, there's no way I'd plan Edward and Bella getting back together, cos I hate Edward's guts. This way just felt right as I wrote it, and I hope it felt right as you read it.

Please review. It means a lot.


	4. Brick by Boring Brick

Brand New Eyes

A/N:

Okay, this part is a little more complex, with time and tense changes... so, yeah, let's see if I can handle it. Oh, by the way, this is important for this part: it's set in England.

Four: Brick by Boring Brick

Kate's POV:

_16__th__ May 2011_

Her eyes are the same as they've always been: almond shaped and the colour of the sky on a cool spring day, with thin, ginger lashes all around them. She has the same face that she's always had: delicate, button nose; Cupid's bow, pale pink lips; a dusting of ginger freckles across her pale skin and rose tinted cheeks.

Her tiny hand feels the same as I wrap my fingers around it. Her nails are long and painted perfectly. It's so sad that someone as beautiful and perfect as her, my baby sister, could fall so hard.

_6__th__ May 1996_

I don't remember much about the day Tanya was born, except that I was five. I also know that it was sunny; very sunny. I remember that all the midwives said that it was really hot for May. I didn't care if the sun was abnormal; I was just enjoying playing in the back garden with Garrett, the boy that lived next door. He'd just got a new football, I we were trying to see which one of us could pop it first.

I jumped on it in my shabby trainers and it slipped out from beneath my feet; I fell and slid across the muddy grass, just as I heard my Mom gasp from inside the house: "It's coming!"

After that, I can't remember much except that my Nan came round to look after me whilst my mom went off to the hospital. I wanted a brother, "'cause girls are so boring," I said. My Nan laughed and told me I was a girl. I denied it.

_31__st__ December, 1999_

Everyone thought that the world was going to end the next day. I thought it was really funny, because Tanya was terrified, and I loved teasing her. In fact, I took every opportunity I could to trick her and prank her. I found it hilarious, how she reacted. She swallowed every lie I fed to her. Some of my favourites were:

Me: Hey, Tanya, you know, if you leave apple pie in the oven any longer the half and hour and 3 seconds it'll explode.

Tanya: Mom, mom, the apple pie is gonna explode.

Another good one was:

Me: Tanya, if you roll and snowball with your bare hands and ram it into your face and talking snowman will appear.

Tanya: Oh, wow!

She then ran outside and followed my instructions.

So, I was always in trouble for teasing my little sister, and she was always getting ill or hurt for doing all the things I told her to. To be honest, I hated her for three reasons: she got more attention than me; she was a girl, and I'd wanted a brother; soon after she was born. Garrett's family moved away. Now, I know that that last one wasn't her fault, but my petulant child's mind told me otherwise.

We didn't get to stay up until midnight to see the New Year in, even though I insisted that I wouldn't be tired, honest. Tanya went off to bed as soon as she was told to, like a meek little puppy. I hated her for that, aswell: she made me look so bad; so much for a sibling being a partner in crime.

But I wasn't about to miss out on the possible fun, though. I slept in the same room as Tanya, and I kept her up the whole night, telling her scary stories about the end of the world and various other things.

Even after that, she still told me she loved me.

_12__th__ September, 2000_

My tenth birthday. I was in double figures now; I felt so grown up. Garrett, who I still considered to be my best friend, came down to visit and spend the day with me.

The day didn't go as well as I'd hoped, though. It rained, so my Mom wouldn't let me go outside. That made me furious and sulky, so I spent the rest of the day being cruel to Tanya. I refused to let her have any of my cake, and she ran out of the room crying. Garrett sat there, looking uncomfortable, while my Mom yelled at me. He wasn't the Garrett I'd known when I was five years old; he had become well behaved and polite and his hair was combed neatly.

I told him that, and asked him what he was playing at. After that, we didn't talk for years. Surprisingly, I didn't blame that on Tanya. I blamed it on Garrett.

_25__th__ December, 2003._

This was a turning point: Tanya started fighting back. When I stole her croissant at the breakfast table in the morning, she didn't deflate and let me have it. She snatched it back and told me to go back to whatever bin I came from. We all sat in stunned silence as she ate the croissant. My Mom – dad had left three years ago – probably felt proud and relieved. I felt infuriated and violated. How dare she fight back? How dare she? I was older; I was twelve, and she was only seven. Yet, here she was, standing up to me.

Three more times that day she argued with me. Mom's relief faded away as she realised that she now had two Kates in the house. One had been more than enough for her to handle.

After that day, we were never the same again. After about a year of bitter hatred, door slamming and shouting, I began to develop and grudging respect for her, and she began to realise that she'd made her point, and maybe we could get along now.

_12__th__ September, 2005._

It didn't rain; it was my birthday, and it didn't rain. When I woke up and saw the sun, I wondered for a moment if it really had been Tanya's fault for all these years, and only now that she liked me would she allow me to have sunshine.

I didn't think that for long, though, because Tanya was hugging me. I hugged her back, and smiled as I realised that, just a year ago, this would never have happened. Once my enemy, my little sister was now my best friend. She'd filled the space that Garrett - and, later, a girl called Georgia - had left empty.

"Come get your presents, Katie!" Tanya said, pulling me from the room and down the short corridor to my Mom's room. In the corner of the small room sat a large pile of presents in blue and green wrapping paper.

My presents were all brilliant: Paramore's first album, _All We Know Is Falling_; a silver iPod Classic; a Paramore poster; a pair of black skinny jeans; a pair of blue converse; a few t-shirts with band names on them; and, the ultimate prize: an expensive, profession Fuji film camera.

All of the other presents had been picked up by Tanya after I'd finished looking at them, but not this one. This one I didn't put down. I'd unwrapped it carefully, knowing what it was, and removed it slowly from the cardboard box. I cradled it gently in my hands, stroking the black plastic sides and the long lens. There was a leaflet in the box with it, but, as usual, I refused to look at that; I just wanted to get outside right then and start fiddling with it. I already new enough about photography to be able to produce some good results, but this camera could give me even better than I'd ever got before; this camera was what I'd been waiting for for months.

"C'mon," I said to Tanya, grabbing her hand. "Come and be my model."

She jumped up eagerly and skipped along beside me as I picked up my tripod from our room and hurried downstairs to the back garden. I wasn't dressed, but Tanya was; she always had been an early bird, up and dressed in her pretty, flowery skirts and dresses before anyone else.

"Okay, fairy princess," I said as I set up my tripod on the garden path and placed the new, precious camera on top of it. "Strut your stuff."

She giggled and ran to pluck a flower from the ground. She knew I loved getting shots of her doing sweet, innocent things like that. I snapped the picture and smiled.

She then started dancing around on the lawn; I fiddled with some settings and snapped a load more pictures.

"Tanya, come here," I said, beckoning her over.

She ran towards me and stopped, smiling up at me sweetly.

"Okay," I told her. "Do that face into the camera and hold the flower up in front."

She did, and it looked perfect. I manage to capture perfectly the adorable innocence of my little sister. I would treasure that picture years later, when that innocence was long gone, but I didn't know that at the time; it was just another picture to add to my portfolio.

"How does it work?" Tanya asked me after I'd taken a few more pictures.

I smiled. "Well, to cut it down to the three basic elements, it's all about the exposure, the lens, and the subject."

"What's that?" she wanted to know, forever curious.

I smiled and explained to her about how exposure was to do with light, the lens was the thing that zoomed in and captured the image, and the subject was whatever was being photographed.

"Right," she said, nodding seriously in the naive, sweet way that only small children can.

After that, Tanya wasn't just my model: she was my pupil. She experimented, under my guidance, with wildlife photography, plant photography, and portraits. But, when it came down to it, she wasn't a photographer: she was someone who drew and sketched and painted. She liked to create whatever appeared in her mind, rather than just capturing whatever was in front of her. She liked the complete possibility of drawing, she told me once, a few years later. She liked knowing that whatever she conjured up in her mind could be transferred to the paper.

But that summed Tanya up completely: the real world was never where she wanted to be. She wanted imagination and fairytales.

_6__th__ May, 2009_

Tanya turned thirteen. It was the start of the year when everything began to go wrong; when her life became a dark, downward spiral and her pretty face was soured with tears. Tears that she managed to conceal from me and everyone else for so long.

I should have known, really. If I'd been more metaphorical and day dreamy; if I'd been a writer, I might have seen the foreshadowing: it rained. For the first time that I could remember, it rained on Tanya's birthday.

I wanted to take pictures of it; of Tanya dancing in the rain. But she was too old for that now; she didn't want to get her hair wet. I was reminded of the fact that my sister was a different type of girl to me: she was the kind that cringed away from the slightest splash of mud, whereas I was the kind who would slide through it on my ass, just for fun.

So, on that day, I felt for the first time that I wasn't the most important person in Tanya's life; that she was growing up and away from me. It hurt.

_25__th__ May 2009_

She came home late, with her usually perfectly styled ginger hair matted and falling messily about her face. It wasn't raining – the sky was flat grey with clouds – but her face was wet: she'd been crying. Mom tried to talk to her, and I tried to follow her as she ran up to our room, but she just slammed the door in my face.

I felt murderously angry. Who had done this to my sister, my sweet baby sister? They would die, if only she would tell me who they were. I tried to find out fro the next three weeks, but every time she refused to answer my questions. She'd change the subject, or ignore me, or shout at me to shut the fuck up.

My sister hardly ever swore; there was definitely something wrong here.

_27__th__ July 2009_

We'd thought she was fine. She'd started coming home from school on time, and she seemed happy enough, if a little withdrawn. Then, on the 27th July, the phone rang. I answered it, and was shocked to here the school secretary on the other end of the line.

"Hello, this is Old Swinford High School calling," she said.

"Hello," I said. "What are you ringing for?"

"It's about a spate of truanting. Can I speak to your mom?"

Feeling confused and anxious, I handed the phone over to my mom and sat on the sofa nearby, nervously waiting to find out what the secretary had to say.

It turned out that, for the past week and a half, Tanya had been leaving school at lunchtime and not coming back, or just not turning up at all in the mornings.

She wouldn't tell us anything, even when mom was begging her with tears running down her face. She was so scared, and so was I. Something was seriously up with Tanya, and I felt powerless; for so long, I'd been protecting her. Now, I didn't know what to protect her from, and it left me feeling like a failure of an elder sister.

_15__th__ August 2009_

Things started to look up: Tanya bought a boy called Edward back to the house, and they hung out for hours. I really liked him; he looked at her like she was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen, and her face lit up when she was with him.

I felt a little jealous, because my role as the best friend had been well and truly taken over by Edward. But I felt glad aswell: Edward would do a better job than I ever did.

At least, that's what I thought then...

_12__th__ September 2009_

It was my nineteenth birthday, and the plan was this: go out to the cinema in the morning with my friends – a bunch of five skater boys and two emo girls – and then hang out with my mom, Tanya and Edward for the rest of the day.

There was no way it could be just Tanya: she had Edward had become one entity over the past month, so I wouldn't want to separate them, even if it had been possible.

The plans quickly went down the drain, though, when I returned from the cinema to find Tanya crying in our room. A glance at the nearby computer screen told me all I needed to know: Edward, the jerk off, had sent her a video of him making out with some brunette bitch.

"Only a twat breaks up with someone like that," I told Tanya. "He's not worth the tears."

She told me to stop talking bullshit, and that he was worth everything. I tried to protest, but she told me to piss off. So, knowing when a battle was lost, piss off was exactly what I did.

She didn't come out of our room for two days. She just stayed under the covers of her bed. She didn't eat, despite please from me and mom. She told me she wanted to die; I told her that I wanted Edward to die.

_1__st__ October 2009_

It was the worst day of my life, so far. It was Saturday, so I woke up and ten o'clock to find Tanya's bed covered in blood and a knife in her hand. She'd slashed her wrists.

I screamed – something I rarely did – and pulled her limp, pale body into my arms. I ran downstairs carrying her and found my mom in the kitchen.

"Call 999!" I yelled at her.

She did, and the fifteen minutes waiting for the ambulance to arrive dragged on forever. We pressed towels hard against Tanya's bleeding wrists and begged and commanded her to live.

"Stay alive, you mother fucker," I told her.

Mom and I were both crying uncontrollably by the time the ambulance arrived. The paramedics rushed Tanya into the ambulance; we sat in the back with her as they raced to the hospital, all sirens blazing.

It was weird, because I'd always wanted to ride in the back of an ambulance with its sirens screaming. Now I'd got my wish and it was the worst day of my life. Never before had I so clearly seen the wisdom in the phrase 'be careful what you wish for'.

_4__th__ October 2009_

Tanya was released from the hospital with bandages wrapped around her wrists and a tub of anti-depressants. She and I both insisted that she wasn't depressed; Mom just told her to take the goddamn pills. Reluctantly, she did.

_3__rd__ December 2009_

It had been snowing for two days when I found out that no amount of 'goddamn' pills or love from her family was enough for Tanya. It wasn't enough to keep her here, with us.

In the middle of the night, she left. I woke up, and her bed was empty. On her pillow lay her journal with a note attached to the front.

_Read this, Kate x _it read. I did as I was instructed. It was full of pictures: photos and drawings. There were photos of Tanya and I as kids, me glaring at the camera as Tanya tried to hold my hand; there were photos of mom sitting on the bench in the garden, reading a book: candid shots that I'd taken when I was first getting into photography; there were photos of me and Tanya on the Christmas in 2003 when Tanya first started fighting back; there were the pictures I took of Tanya when I got a camera for my fifteenth birthday; there were the amateurish photos that Tanya took when I first taught her how to use a camera; there were pictures of me and Tanya together, more recently, but still a few years old; pictures of Tanya with Edward. These pictures were nice, and they made me smile.

And then there were Tanya's drawings: pieces of A4 paper pulled from her sketch pad and glued into this book. There were her drawings from a few years ago: smiling princesses perched atop unicorns; angels flying through the blue sky; fairies dancing around a meadow. Then there were her more recent drawings: princess in the dark coloured gowns, with their faces turned away; angels weeping beside old, gnarled trees; butterflies with black wings lying torn up on the ground.

The final page in the journal was covered in Tanya's small, curly handwriting. It was written in her best pen, which wrote in green ink that could be erased. I'd always had a petty feeling of jealousy over that pen.

I ran my hand over the words on the page, reading them slowly as a cold feeling of dread crept up from my stomach into my chest and throat.

_Kate,_ the note said.

_I love you. Thank you, for everything: for all the years when you rejected me, because you taught me to fight and be strong; and for all the times when you were good to me, because you showed me how to love. I couldn't have asked for a better sister than you. _

_I know that you'll want to find me, because that's the kind of person you are: brave, loving, determined. But, please, don't. Don't come searching for me, because that is the last thing I want. I won't come home, not until I'm ready. You should know me well enough by now to know that I'm stubborn as a mule. _

_And I'm going to be really stubborn about this. So, please, don't look for me. Just wait, because I will come back, one day, I swear to it. _

_All my love, _(that was the weird, formal way she signed all her letters and emails) _Tanya. X_

I just sat there, staring, for a few minutes. Tanya was gone; Tanya had left. I didn't know why, and I didn't know when. I just knew that my baby sister was out there, somewhere, in the cold and the snow. A lump filled my throat, and my eyes burned as tears tumbled down onto the pages of the journal. Tanya, Tanya...

Jumping up, I hurried over to the wardrobe. I had to know what clothes she'd taken; I had to know if she was going to be warm. Opening the wooden doors, I saw that the wardrobe was full. The only things missing were Tanya's pink suede boots, grey skinny jeans, pink floral dress and long sleeved, tight fitted grey t-shirt.

I fell to my knees and laughed a quiet, mirthless laugh. Of course Tanya would take her favourite clothes, and of course her favourite clothes would be the ones that were least practical for the weather.

_16__th__ March 2010_

Spring was always Tanya's favourite season. She loved the feeling of things awakening; she loved how the whole world seemed to be starting to smile after months of crying.

I sat staring out of the window, wishing she would come dancing up the drive. But she didn't. I imagined her as a little girl every time I thought of her; I saw her with pink bows in her hair and giant yellow wellies on her feet.

I hadn't searched for her. I hadn't searched for the little girl in my mind or for the confusing, lost teenager she'd become. Mom had wanted to, but I told her no. Tanya didn't want us to search for her, so we shouldn't.

I was going to be twenty this year, but I wasn't going to celebrate; I was more interested in Tanya's birthday: she was going to be fourteen this year, and I'd planned on creating a giant collage of fourteen hundred photographs for her.

I was still going to do it, even if she wasn't going to be back in time for her birthday. It would be waiting for her when she came back, because she would come back.

_6__th__ May 2010_

Not back yet. It rained; I hoped she was indoors somewhere.

_1__st__ August_

The first day of the summer holiday. I'm spending mine indoors. Mom's spending all her time out of the house. Where, I don't know; she goes out and comes staggering in at stupid o'clock, normally with a stupidly young man on her arm. Or, she doesn't come back until late morning of the next day.

_12__th__ September 2010_

Mom completely forgot that it was my birthday; she only remembered at five in the evening, when she made a pathetic attempt at backing a cake. It got burnt, so we just left it on the table, uneaten.

_5__th__ October 2010_

I went to the local supermarket because there was nothing but out of date instant coffee in the house. As I walked down the street, I avoided looking at any young girls with red hair, for obvious reasons.

Once I was inside the shop, I thought it was safe to look around again. But I was wrong: I caught sight of a little girl whose ginger hair was tied into two pigtails by pink bows. On her feet she wore yellow wellies.

I ended up crying in the toilets.

However, when I thought things couldn't get any worse, they did: I walked out of the toilets with red rimmed eyes and bumped into my ex-best friend, Garrett. Unfortunately, he recognised me instantly. I guess I hadn't changed much: I still wore the same sort of blue converse, the same sort of ripped blue jeans, and the same sort of blue beanie hat.

He hadn't changed much either. His mousy-brown hair still hung straight and spiky just past his collar, and, I realised with a shock, he still wore the pale green baker boy hat I'd bought him for his tenth birthday.

All the hatred I'd had for him years ago had long ago faded away, so it wasn't hard for him to persuade me to tell him why I'd been crying. After a short conversation, I found myself crying into his chest in the middle of the shop.

We arranged to meet up again the next day.

_6__th__ October 2010_

Garrett came to my house – I didn't want to risk anymore embarrassing public displays of emotion – and we talked about anything and everything, apart form Tanya. I noticed things about him that I hadn't noticed yesterday, like how he wore a silver skull-ring on his left thumb, and how his accent was tinged with a slight bit of American.

That was because he'd recently spent a whole year living in America with his fiancée. Who he had since broken up with, he hastened to add.

I wondered why he thought it was so important that he added that. Did he want me to go out with him? Did I want me to go out with him?

It was a strange idea, and one that kept my mind of Tanya for short amounts of time each day. In fact, I spent quite a lot of time thinking about Garrett.

_31__st__ December 2010_

New Year's Eve. Mom went out and got pissed. I went over to Garrett's and listened to music (we'd found out that we were both big Paramore fans). After the end of _The Only Exception_, he kissed me.

_2__nd__ February, 2011_

I was with Garrett when it came on the news: a girl, about fourteen years old, had been found in the cellar of a convicted rapist and paedophile. They didn't show a photo of her, because she looked so terrible that it could have been distressing to some, but they did show an artist's impression.

My mouth fell open and I swear my heart stopped for a second. I couldn't breathe.

It was... it was...

I could feel my hand closing tighter and tighter around Garrett's arm, and I knew my nails must be hurting him, but I couldn't let go. I needed to hold on to him in order to hold onto reality.

It couldn't be true, it couldn't be true... it was bad news and good news all at once and it made me want to sing and throw up and cry and laugh all at once.

The artist's impression was of Tanya.

_4__th__ February 2011_

She was in hospital. When I turned up there with mom, and I saw her, I got the same feeling that I'd got before: I wanted to cry and laugh at once, so I settled for throwing my arms around her and telling her I loved her.

She didn't hug me back.

The doctors said that memory loss could be a result of extreme trauma. I was just glad she was alive.

_10__th__ February 2011_

Tanya had to have a psych assessment today. They thought she had mental problems. I'll kill that bastard who did this to her, I decided. If I ever get my hands on him, he'll have to learn to live without balls.

_13__th__ February 2011_

They submitted her to a mental hospital. Apparently she's a borderline schizophrenic. I'd thought I'd got my baby sister back, but I hadn't: they'd got her in a mental hospital, and I just couldn't get images of straight jackets and lobotomies out of my head.

_16__th__ May 2011_

I visit Tanya, and she's there but not there. I wonder idly who she thinks she is, in her mind. What personality is she? Whose life is she living? In that life, in that person, is she my sister? Does she know how much I love her? Does she remember all the time we spent together? All the fights, all the good times... are they all gone now, because of some mother fucker who wanted a little girl to go down on him?

She looks like my sister, I think, as I sit down on the stool beside her bed. Her eyes are the same as they've always been: almond shaped and the colour of the sky on a cool spring day, with thin, ginger lashes all around them. She has the same face that she's always had: delicate, button nose; Cupid's bow, pale pink lips; a dusting of ginger freckles across her pale skin and rose tinted cheeks.

Her tiny hand feels the same as I wrap my fingers around it. Her nails are long and painted perfectly. It's so sad that someone as beautiful and perfect as her, my baby sister, could fall so hard.

I wish I'd been able to catch her.

A/N:

Here are the lyrics to the song that inspired this, in case you were interested:

She lives in a fairy tale  
>Somewhere too far for us to find<br>Forgotten the taste and smell  
>Of the world that she's left behind<br>It's all about the exposure the lens I told her  
>The angles were all wrong now<br>She's ripping wings off of butterflies

Keep your feet on the ground  
>When your head's in the clouds<br>Well go get your shovel  
>And we'll dig a deep hole<br>To bury the castle, bury the castle  
>Go get your shovel<br>And we'll dig a deep hole  
>To bury the castle, bury the castle<br>Ba da ba ba da ba ba ha

So one day he found her crying  
>Coiled up on the dirty ground<br>Her prince finally came to save her  
>And the rest you can figure out<br>But it was a trick  
>And the clock struck twelve<br>Well make sure to build your house brick by boring brick  
>Or the wolf's gonna blow it down<p>

Keep your feet on the ground  
>When your head's in the clouds<br>Well go get your shovel  
>And we'll dig a deep hole<br>To bury the castle, bury the castle  
>Go get your shovel<br>And we'll dig a deep hole  
>We'll bury the castle, bury the castle<p>

Well you built up a world of magic  
>Because your real life is tragic<br>Yeah you built up a world of magic  
>If it's not real<br>You can't hold it in your hand  
>You can't feel it with your heart<br>And I won't believe it  
>But if it's true<br>You can see it with your eyes  
>Oh, even in the dark<br>And that's where I want to be, yeah

Go get your shovel  
>And we'll dig a deep hole<br>To bury the castle, bury the castle  
>Go get your shovel<br>And we'll dig a deep hole  
>To bury the castle, bury the castle<p>

_[x2]_  
>Ba da ba ba da ba ba da<br>Ba da ba ba ba da ba ba  
>Ba da ba ba da ba ba da<br>Ba da ba ba ba ba ba ba 


	5. Turn it Off

Brand New Eyes

A/N:

So, yeah, here's the new chapter. However, here's a warning: there is swearing, sexual references and drug use ahead.

Five: Turn it Off  
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Bella's POV:

_26__th__ December, 1966_

I know how it feels to be cold: so cold that your eyes water and it freezes on your cheeks; so cold that your toes go numb and you can't even remember how it felt to feel them.

I know how it feels to be hungry: so hungry that you couldn't eat a single mouthful because your stomach is so tight and achy; so hungry that your hands shake so much and so fast that you can't even notice it.

I know how it feels to be thirsty; so thirsty that you can't open your mouth to even breathe properly; so thirsty that your lips are like lizard skin.

I wandered through dark street after dark street, each step taking me further away from my safest haven, where the devil lived; each step tugging me closer to a black empty future, where I did nothing but walk and wither away. I didn't know what to do with myself; all my muscles ached and my eyelids were heavy and sore from crying and needing to sleep.

All my self preservation instincts were at war: some were pulling at me, begging me to return to my home, my safe place, the warmth and the food; others were dragging me forward, screaming at me to keep going, to run and get as far away from it all as possible and find a place to sleep and eat, somewhere he'll never find you, he can't ever find you...

So I kept going, trudging forward, step after painful, weary step, because I didn't have the energy to turn myself around.

_I must keep going, I must keep going, I must keep going..._

Until I collapsed onto the ground, whacked my head off... something – it hurt, ouch – and it was all black and fuzzy and I was gone, drifting away into... into...

_4__th__ July, 1967_

The music waved and throbbed and undulated through the sweet, summer air. I closed my eyes and drew in a deep breath from the joint in my fingers. It tasted good, and my mind drifted upwards slightly into the familiar haze of stoned ecstasy and joy. It was so relaxed; so perfect and relaxed.

I sank back onto my elbows, feeling the grass tickle the bare skin of my arms. I sighed; it was a slow, calming wave of a sigh, which stretched up into the air above me and all around me. This was good; this was right. The sun was warm on my eyelids, which looked a pretty orange-pink colour from the inside.

Passing the joint onto whoever was next to me, I allowed my eyes to drift open halfway so I could survey the scene around me. There was a sea of grass, and people: beautiful young people, like me, with long hair shining in the sun. Some of them were kissing as they lay back on the ground; some had their tops off; some were just sitting here, listening to the music and getting high, like me.

I was in a lazy, loose circle with about ten others. There were joints and bottles of beer being passed around; everyone took a slow drag or a lazy swig before passing it on, because that was what this whole thing was about: sharing. Sharing our world and our future and being free. It was about peace, because killing was stupid and unnecessary and we didn't need it. It was about breaking rules and doing whatever we fucking wanted to, because the establishment was killing us, killing us all; it was even killing itself. We were the future, we were tomorrow; we were today and now.

"These guys are cosmic," I heard Jasper intone form beside me.

"Huh?"

"These guys," he repeated, gesturing to the band on the make-shift stage a short distance away. "They're cosmic, man."

With one long hand, he pushed a thick lock of his wavy, sandy blonde hair off his face. There was a light dusting of stubble along his jaw; his pupils were large and his brown eyes looked far away.

"Oh, yeah," I agreed, running a hand through my loose, straight brown hair as I took a bottle from the guy on the other side of me. "They're Blind Faith, o' course they're fuckin' cosmic."

The beer was warm and sharp on the roof of my mouth as I took a swig of it and passed it on to Jasper. He took it and almost poured it on his face; he nearly missed his mouth, 'cause he was nearly lying down and it was so funny.

I laughed with him as he tried again to take a swig. That time he did alright, and then passed the bottle onto the next guy.

"But you're more fuckin' cosmic," Jasper said, twisting round to face me.

I giggled.

"Seriously, Bells, you're really fuckin' brilliant."

I liked what he was saying, and I knew where this was going: he was going to kiss me, like he did yesterday, when he was helping me cook in the tiny kitchen of the tiny flat where a load of us slept and ate and lived together.

I mean, it wasn't like it was first time; I'd kissed and made love to loads of other boys and men before: that was what free love was all about. Make love, not war; the more love we made, the less war there'd be.

But, I guess, with Jasper, it was something that I'd been waiting for. And he felt different; he was more intense and it was like he knew something; like he felt something. Like he knew and felt more than the rest of us; like he cared more about the whole thing. I admired him; I loved him. He was the one who'd taken me in, under his wing.

When his mouth met mine, our heady breaths entangled together: ganja and beer and fresh air. His hair felt like soft straw under my fingers as I pulled his face closer to mine; his jaw was hard and strong as I traced it. His hands were moving down my back, down my legs; then up my legs, and holding my hips.

I lifted my leg so that it was resting across his hips, so we could get closer. His chest pressed into mine, and his hands were still moving, touching, tracing, feeling.

The music pulsed through me, through us, keeping pace with the throbbing between my legs, until we were all one: me, the music, Jasper, the music, the drugs, the everything...

_27__th__ December, 1966_

_Warm sunlight, brushing over my skin; gliding in through the stained glass windows. I close my eyes__ and smile. "Hey, Daddy..." And the stone is warm beneath my knees, and my skirt is soft as my skin presses against it. I'm eight, and it's all good: there's truth, and faith, and my daddy, and the sunshine: it's all good. _

_And then I'm fifteen, and the sun isn't the same anymore; it's too hot. His hands are too hot and too cold and too... wrong. He shouldn't; be touching me, not like that. He should be holding my hand, guiding me down paths between fields as I skip along beside him; he shouldn't be holding that, touching that, feeling that, talking like that..._

_It's wrong and I don't like it and it's wrong and it's wrong; no, no, no, no, no, no, no! _

"_Dad- _

"Dy!"

It was warm. It was warm, but I felt like it should be cold... I had a very strong memory of cold; a cold night, with cold streets and a cold wind and...

_Oh!_

It all flooded back to me, like a tidal wave, smashing dams as it made it's destructive, terrifying way towards me. I remembered everything; every little detail that I wanted to forget; everything that had sent me running from home with nothing but the clothes I was wearing.

Where were my clothes?

I wasn't wearing them now; I was dressed in white cotton pyjamas... men's pyjamas. And I was lying in a bed; there were pale yellow sheets over me, and a white pillow behind me.

_Where am I how did I get here whose pyjamas are these why am I wearing them what happened why am I here where am I? _

The questions formed a long, twisting, never ending, fast moving circle inside my confused, heavy head. I was struck again by how warm it was; a sharp contrast to freezing temperatures of last night.

I slid my foot out of the bed; it was bare, but the temperature outside the bed was barely any different from the inside: it was still perfectly, pleasantly warm.

_Pleasant_... that had been my life, up until it was turned on its head; up until I found a demon in my safest haven, in my guardian angel.

I swung both feet out of the bed and stood up. I wrapped my arms across my stomach – why? Was I protecting myself from an empty room, from a long lost fiend? – and cast my cautious eyes over the room. It was small, and quite characterless. Except that it was warm, very warm, with its soft yellows on the duvet and the tiny lamp on the bedside table. Those were the only items of furniture in the room: a single bed pushed up against the wall, under a white curtained window; and a small bedside table with two drawers in it and a tiny yellow lamp sitting on top. The walls were painted with a single coat of off-white paint.

How had I been lucky enough to end up in a room like this? Which nice, caring person had rescued me from where I'd collapsed last night? Who had brought me warmth when I was at the coldest point of my life?

I stepped out of the door and found out.

Outside the room there was a short, narrow corridor, off which there opened three wooden doors. There was no other person in the corridor apart from the man who – I assumed – had rescued me and brought me here.

He was sitting on a wooden stool at the far end of the corridor, with one foot resting on his opposite knee. He was playing a guitar: I had never met a guitarist before, but I'd heard about them; they were supposed to be rebels, freaks, and heathens.

But did I trust a word I'd heard before, in the terrible past that used to be so full of light?

No.

So, I said, "Hello," shyly.

He looked up, his eyes far away then coming back into focus as he saw me. I noticed two things: he had the sincerest, kindest smile I'd ever seen; and, he was handsome in a rugged way that I'd never appreciated before. His jaw was strong and covered in a short, thin beard that had clearly come from not bothering to shave, rather than deciding to grow it. His hair was the same pale yellow as the sheets in the bedroom, and it hung down to his shoulders in a messy, straw-like tangle.

"Hi," he replied, standing up and leaning the guitar against the wall. "I'm Jasper," he added, running a hand through his wild hair. His fingers, I noticed, were long, thin and seemed very flexible and strong. I could see veins under the wiry muscles of his arms, which were bare: he wore only a thin shirt with the sleeves rolled up and the top five buttons open.

I'd never seen anyone as scruffy before; he was so different from what I'd run from, that I immediately felt safe. I didn't know what to expect from him, and he didn't know what to expect from me. I could be anyone I wanted to be, and he need never know about what happened to me.

I was safe.

I beamed. He laughed and flung his arm casually across my shoulders.

"At least I know I didn't pick up a moody bitch," he said, chuckling as he led me through one of the doors off the corridor.

When I first stepped into the room, I thought that it was a really weird carpet covering the floor: a really lumpy carpet with loads of colours. Then I thought that it was load of dead bodies, and my entire body sparked with adrenaline.

Then, when on of the 'bodies' rolled over and rubbed at her nose with her hand, I realised that the room was filled with people sleeping: in sleeping bags on the floor; on mattresses on the floor; on the sofa; on the dining table; sitting in the corner with their backs resting against the wall. I'd never seen anything like this before.

"These guys," Jasper said, smiling at me like we were both in on a secret, "are lazy buggers."

He stepped forward and casually kicked one of the sleeping people with his bare foot. The person moaned something unintelligible and lazily waved a hand to swat him away.

"I blame the late night orgies; these guys just have no stamina," he told me matter of factly, before expertly weaving through the bodies to a door on the other side of the room.

I was left where I was, feeling stunned. Late night orgies? Swearing more than anyone I'd ever met, ever? This guy, Jasper, was... well, he was blowing my mind.

I was scared; terrified. But I wasn't going to run. I'd already run as far as possible from where I'd been before. Why should I keep running, when I'd found the place that was the complete parallel world to my old life?

I wouldn't run. I would stay here.

"You coming, hon?" Jasper asked, and I picked up a trace of a Texan accent.

I nodded, smiled, and followed the path he'd taken. I didn't think that I would ever look back.

_22__nd__ December, 1966_

On this day, the day before_ it_ happened, before _he_ happened, before the Devil invaded my God, it was snowing. The white powder tumbled past the window, and I smiled up at my daddy. His hand was rested on my shoulder; the weak yellow sunlight reflecting off the snow made his blonde hair glow like a halo around his kind face.

His face, with its friendly, relaxing smile, was a haven for so many people. But, for me, it was more than a haven: it was a promise of the perfect life; it was a thousand memories of my childhood; it was a faith, a deep faith that could guide me through everything.

He was the vicar in this tiny town we lived in; we lived in the vicarage, just me and him. The vicarage was a small cottage behind the church. It didn't have much of a garden, and it only had one floor with three rooms - my bedroom, his bedroom and the kitchen where a table and chairs were crammed in, too – but it was our home and I loved it.

I didn't have any daft ideas about spreading my wings and getting out of this little village, because everything I needed was right there. I had my daddy, my home and God. God was everywhere: in the sky, the trees, in the snow falling idyllically past the stain glass window of the church.

We were standing in front of that stain glass window, and I could feel the cold of the stone floor through my white socks. In a few minutes morning service would start, and my daddy would step up to the altar and talk to the communion, some of whom were just beginning to file into the church. When daddy stood up there, he changed in a way that made him more than my daddy; it was like a little bit of The Lord flowed into him. There was an extra glow in his eyes, an extra energy and at the same time subtlety in the way he moved his hands and his arms...

My daddy was special, I thought to myself, smiling, as I moved to sit on the front pew and he headed for the front of the church.

He spoke, and we all listened, and I felt like I learnt something new about myself and the world around me, as I did every time I heard my daddy spreading the word of God.

But there was still so much left to learn, and the next lesson would be sudden and terrifying and it would destroy all the teachings given before it.

_27__th__ December, 1966_

All the people in the front room woke up gradually. They would wander into the kitchen in a daze, smile at me and Jasper, before grabbing a drink from the fridge or some sort of dried green leaf that I didn't recognise from a bread tin in the corner of the kitchen.

The first person to wander in was a tall girl with long blonde hair, dressed in nothing but a man's green t-shirt.

"Mornin' Rose," Jasper said to her.

"'Ello, Jazz," she replied, before flicking her blue eyes at me. "Who are you?"

"Bella," I said.

She nodded, smiled slightly, said, "See you round," then grabbed some of the green leaf and wandered back into the living room.

The next person who walked – well, more like skipped – into the kitchen was much more vocal and friendly.

"Hey, newbie!" she chirped the instant she saw me. "I'm Alice!"

I smiled at her, feeling more than a little worried by her over excitement.

"I'm Bella."

"Bella!" she squeaked, clapping her hands. "Alright, Babe. Hey, Jaffa Cakes, you want some grass?"

"Sure," Jasper said.

It seemed that Jaffa Cakes was Alice's nickname for him. But grass? What did that mean?

Alice pulled a small handful of the dried green leaves out of the bread tin (was that grass?) and Jasper handed her a small rectangle of what looked like tracing paper.

"Thank you, Jaffa Cakes," Alice sang, taking the rectangle of paper and sprinkling a thin line of the green leaves down the centre of it's length. She then expertly rolled the paper into a thin cylinder, twisted on end of it, and inserted a small cylinder of cardboard into the other end. After that, she placed the cardboard end into her mouth and lit the twisted end with a lit match that Jasper passed to her.

"You want some, Babe?" she asked me after she'd inhaled a deep breath from the... what could I call it?

I eyed it suspiciously as Jasper took a drag from it and offered it to me. Well, why not? I thought.

So I took it from Jasper, took a deep breath from it and...

Ugh, fire! Oh, my gosh, what is that?

I was coughing and I couldn't breathe. The thing slipped from my fingers to the floor. I was bent over, coughing, coughing, coughing. Would I ever stopp coughing?

Jasper's hand was rubbing my back, and Alice was in front of my face, her hands cupping my chin.

"You're okay, Bella," Jasper told me.

"Babe, breathe through nose. That's it babe, just breathe, you're all right."

I could breathe now, and I felt myself getting embarrassed. Why didn't _they _react like that?

"It's okay, Babe, just try again. You'll get used to it."

Alice handed em the thing again, and I glared at it.

"Trust us, Bella, it's far out once you get used to it," Jasper said, his smile genuine and kind.

So I tried again, because this was a new life after all, wasn't it? What's the point of a new life if you don't try new things?

_5__th__ March, 1967_

People came and went all the time. People stopped over for a week, or one night; others left to travel the world and sometimes came back about a week later because they'd run out of money, or drugs, or both. There were only five people who were constantly living in the house: Jasper (or Jaffa Cakes, as Alice called him, or Jazz, by everyone else); Alice, who used to be Jasper's girlfriend, before she found out she was lesbian (something would have disgusted me before, but I now had no problem with); Rose, (Rosie to Alice) who was always half asleep in a stoned, drunken state, and always had a minimum of two men hanging off her arm; Emmett, who owned the house and scared off anyone who complained about the loud music playing late at night (and Alice had given him the nickname of Emily); and me, because I had no where else to go. Alice had nicknamed me Babe.

She nicknamed everyone with a word beginning with the first letter of their name. No one else tended to use the nicknames Alice made up, probably because, coming from anyone else, they would sound out of place or weird. But with Alice, everything was natural. She skipped around, completely high, never drowsy like Rosalie. Nothing seemed to get her down, and, despite her tiny size, she filled the room she was in. She buzzed around, talking to anyone about anything in her tiny, high pitched voice.

Life here, in the house, with everyone else... it was good. Everything was good. I didn't think about... _him _that much anymore. Sometimes I'd have nightmares, but it wasn't so bad as long as I avoided acid trips.

The first time I went on an acid trip, it went like this...

_30__th__ January, 1966_

_It begins with colours. Lots and lots of colours: the reds in the room turned to yellows, the greens to bright blues, and the blues to neon oranges. It started to blur slowly, the edges softening and blurring together. The room started to spin slowly, turning into a shimmering vortex of colours. _

_Then everything went black. _

_The green light grew slowly. Changing form a tiny spot of faded colour to a bright circle, almost blinding. I squinted against it, as it slowly formed a horizontal oval: it was an eye. The black circle in the middle – the pupil – was wide but flat in an eerie way. _

_I didn't move as the eyes pulled back and a pale oval face came into focus. It was familiar: the long, thin nose; the thin lips; the blonde and brown eyebrows..._

Daddy_, a tiny voice inside my head whispered. _

_There was nothing but numbness as I stared up at him – he was leaning over me and I was lying on the ground – and then his hand appeared. A jolt of panic shot through me; my limbs tingled with adrenaline and terror. I needed to run but I couldn't... I couldn't escape. I knew what that hand had done, what he had done, and I didn't want it to happen again, not again..._

_But I couldn't run. I couldn't run. Run! I screamed at my muscles. Run! Run, please, please run. _

_His hand moved closer; the fingers were bent and twisted and black at the tips of the chipped nails. They reached closer, closer; so close to my eyes now. I squeezed them shut and waited for the scratch, the bite, the pain._

_Then everything turned red. Then blue, then red, then blue and red and then bruise-coloured. I was outside my body; I could see me, covered in bruises. Bruises on my legs, my arms, my neck, my face... all over. Everything was bruised._

_And he, Daddy, he was standing there with his halo and his devil tail and he was laughing. _

_Forty-Four Years Later..._

_12__th__ March, 2011_

I can't believe Alice tricked me into this. Counselling. Fucking counselling. I'm sixty-one, for Christ's sake. What good is counselling going to do? It's just some stupid woman going on about talking. _La-di-da, talking makes everything better!_

Fuck that shit.

But I went anyway. So here I am, sitting on a once-cushioned-but-now-nearly-cushion-less-from-over-use chair. A woman with long, straight dyed-blonde hair sticks her head out of a nearby door.

"Miss Isabella Cullen?"

"Yeah," I say, standing up and pulling my grey sweater down a little further over my jeans.

"Come with me, please, Miss Cullen," the woman – who I'm guessing is the counsellor – says.

She doesn't show the slightest bit of surprise that I'm this old and still a miss, like most people do.

"So," the counsellor says when I'm sitting down opposite her on a leather couch. "I'm Jessica Stanley, and I'm here to help you."

"I'm Bella Swan, and I'm a depressed bitch with a troubled past. I bet you're so chuffed."

Jessica smiled calmly.

"What happened in your troubled past, Bella? It's okay if you don't want to say it right out."

"My dad fu-fuck... t-t-t-touched me."

A/N:

Okay. So, I wasn't sure how to end it. Happy? Sad? I went for an im between. I hope you guys liked it and it was worth the really, really long wait.


	6. The Only Exception

Brand New Eyes

A/N:

I'm really lazy about updating. Sorry. I guess I just didn't have the inspiration for writing this part. Then I saw my mug with coffee stains around the rim and, EUREKA!

I don't think this part is going to have as complicated a storyline as the last two parts... this part is JAlice. 3

Oh, and when I say Birmingham, I mean the Birmingham in England, in the UK.

Six: The Only Exception

Outside a Café in Birmingham, in the middle of September, there was a wooden table.

There were two coffee cups on the table. One was half-empty and had turned cold a long time ago; a drop of the brown liquid had dribbled part of the way down the side and then dried, leaving a brown streak. The other cup was lying on its side, with a puddle of un-drunk coffee all around it, dripping through the wooden slats of the table onto the hard concrete ground.

There were four wooden chairs around the table, and two of them were empty. The occupants of the other two chairs were a small ten-year-old girl and a thirty-something man. The girl was crouched on her chair, her legs curled up to her chin, making herself as small and unobtrusive as possible. Beneath her shoulder-length straight black hair, her face was tiny, pale, and filled almost entirely with her wide hazel eyes, which darted all over the place, searching for answers to questions she didn't dare to ask.

Her eyes rested briefly on the empty chair opposite her; there should have been two identical eyes staring back at her from an almost identical face, but there weren't. A Barbie doll with blonde hair – cropped short by two young girls with blunt nail scissors – was lying on the pavement beside the chair.

With her bottom lip shaking just a little, she risked a glance at the man next to her. His face was familiar, one that she had known her entire life, but the expression on it was not. She had never seen him so... broken. His thick black eyebrows were pulled tight together in a frown; his cropped black hair was scruffy from the wind and from running his hands through it every few minutes. He did it again, his fingers scraping against his scalp. The little girl had never seen him under such stress.

"Daddy?" she whispered in her small, high-pitched voice. Her eyes searched his beard stubble and chapped lips for some representation of the face she knew as her dad's.

Her bottom lip shook a little more as he turned to look at her: his small, blue eyes behind their square glasses seemed to stare straight through her. He showed no recognition; almost as if he'd forgotten about her. The reality was that he didn't have the energy to look after a terrified little girl, not right now. All he wanted to do was forget.

"Daddy, can we go home now?" the little girl asked, pulling her small arms, covered in goose bumps, around her knees.

He stared at the little girl for a long time as he breathed through his nose, trying to calm himself down. As he looked at her small, pointed chin; her delicate, slightly upturned nose; her large, hazel eyes, like emeralds and mint leaves streaked with toffee, he saw two people gazing back at him: his daughter, and, because she shared so any of her features, his wife.

"Renee," he whispered – his wife's name - his dry, cold lips barely moving. "Alice," he said, a little louder, addressing his daughter.

She blinked hopefully up at him, one hand pressed against her cheek to catch a single tear. Her father did the same action, stopping himself from crying, because he couldn't let himself cry in front of his little girl.

Then he held out his hand towards her, the tear drop still damp on his finger tip.

"Of course we can go home, sweetheart," he said, in an almost, nearly cheerful voice.

Alice's small mouth twitched slightly into a nervous, relieved smile. She took her daddy's hand and hopped down from the chair. Wearily, he stood up too, his free hand lingering for a few seconds on the back of the chair he'd been sitting on. The wood was almost as dry as his skin; the fingers which gripped Alice's hand were calloused from years of playing guitar and never moisturising.

As they walked away, not particularly heading in any direction, Alice turned her head slightly and focused her eyes on the Barbie doll lying under the chair. She wanted to go and pick it up, because maybe then Mommy would come back with Bella so that Bella could get it back. But she didn't turn back towards the doll, and she didn't say anything to her daddy.

Somehow, she knew in her tiny, perceptive child's mind that, no matter how much Bella wanted that doll, Mommy wouldn't come near enough to Daddy to get it.

Bella sat cross-legged in front of the fireplace in her Nan's house. She was more than a little bewildered. Last time she'd checked, she'd been sitting outside a coffee shop in Birmingham with Mommy and Daddy and Alice. Then Mommy and Daddy had started shouting – really shouting, even louder than usual – and then something hot had flown at her arm, and she'd started crying, because it hurt... next minute, Mommy had snatched Bella out of her chair, Barbie had fallen to the ground...

Now, they were here. Bella and Mommy were in Nanny's house. In all of Bella's seven years of life, she'd never been anywhere with just Mommy for long; Daddy and Alice had always been there too.

Bella wanted to ask where Alice was, but there was nobody in the room to ask. So, feeling too hot in front of the fire, Bella stood up and walked across the room to the sofa, which was covered in a patchwork throw, to hide how ripped and stained the brown fabric sofa underneath was.

Bella curled up in the corner of the sofa, her head resting against the arm, which smelt like cat, and grabbed a nearby cushion in her podgy hand. She pulled the cushion into her arm, holding it tight against her chest, like she would a teddy bear. But she didn't have her teddy bear, Jam, with her, so the cushion would have to do.

She looked around her Nan's front room. It was a room that was vaguely, sort of familiar; she'd been here a few times, but not that often. The room smelt like cat, and something else musty, which Bella didn't recognise. She wasn't sure whether or not she liked it or not.

She_ was_ sure, however, that she did _not _like all of the rag dolls and teddy bears in the room. They sat on top of the mantelpiece, staring blankly down at her, and the jostled for position on the dusty, dark wooden tables. They weren't anything like the dolls and teddy bears Bella had at home; all Bella's toys were clean, in colours like pale pink and blue, with friendly face and painted eyes. The ones in her Nan's house, though, had different shaped and coloured buttons sowed wonkily onto the faces as eyes, and some of them were hanging off; the teddy bears were made of brown material, which was all clogged up with dust, and most of them had patches of bright red and pale yellow sowed on when they had split or broken. The rag dolls were even worse: some of them had scarily curved smiles daubed onto their cloth faces in marker pen; others had abnormally large, staring glass eyes.

Behind the soft toys that looked like something out of a horror movie, the walls were papered in green, beige and brown floral wallpaper. It was peeling at the corners, near the ceiling, where large, black spiders clung to their intricately spun webs, or swung down on delicate threads, spinning around, as though celebrating how easy it was for them to live in this house undisturbed.

Bella wasn't used to seeing so many spiders; her first reaction was to cringe back into the sofa and hide her face behind the cushion she was clutching, so that only her large, hazel eyes showed over the top. But then, a small, spider dropped down onto her shoulder; she jumped and squeaked quietly, then froze and watched.

She watched, her grip slowly loosening on the over-stuffed cushion. The spider, moved slowly, almost cautiously; its legs moved with a peculiar, robotic grace. There was something beautiful about it, something beautiful about the spattering of brown drops on its back. It walked in a superior way, as though surveying its kingdom.

_I'm not scared of spiders,_ Bella decided. _Mommy's scared of spiders, but I'm not._

From that day forth, Bella was never scared of another insect, and never timid around any animal.

"They're just like us," she would tell her Mommy.

As soon as they arrived home, Alice's dad turned on the TV, sat Alice down on the black leather sofa, and disappeared into the back garden.

Alice sat for a few minutes, her eyes moving from the chat show on the TV to the glass coffee table, to the red, plastic flowers sitting in a white vase on the coffee table, to the fake white fireplace. Then she slid down off the sofa and started to remove her shoes, because they were leaving dirty marks and Mommy wouldn't like dirty marks... but then she remembered that Mommy wouldn't be coming back again, and decided to leave her shoes on.

In search of something – she didn't know what, maybe an explanation, or maybe her sister – Alice walked across the room in the direction her dad had gone in, towards the back garden.

She saw him before she stepped out on the gravel path that wound across the garden. With her hands on the white doorframe, one foot about to step outside, she watched.

The sky above was bright silver, the kind of luminescent effect that happens when the sun is trying and failing to shine through a thick layer of grey cloud; it made her dad almost silhouetted. His features were just about visible enough for Alice to see something she had never seen before.

There were thick clear droplets running down her dad's face from his eyes: he was crying.

Then something else shocked her: her dad growled a word she'd only ever heard her Mommy's friend Janice say.

"_Fuck_."

Alice listened to the word. She tried forming it with her own lips. It felt weird, but sort of satisfying... she smiled. Yes, her Mommy had gone... yes, this was wrong and weird and bizarre and nothing would ever be _right _again... but, now, she had the perfect word to describe it all.

_Three years later..._

Alice was thirteen: the age where, for a few months, everything feels good; and, for another few months, it all feels like hell.

Right now, on this summer evening, everything felt good for Alice. The sky was blue, with only a few bunches of fluffy clouds; the air smelt like next door's apple pie and freshly mown grass. Alice was sitting outside, listening to little kids laughing in the street out the front and the motorway whooshing past behind their house. Most people complained about the motorway noise, but Alice didn't. Neither did her dad, but that was just because he never complained, for fear of annoying someone and losing them.

Alice never complained about the motorway because the sound made her feel safe. It reminded her that people kept on living; it reminded her that, no matter how many things went wrong, people would always be racing past on a concrete road lifted high above her head, and those people would always have different hopes and dreams and, for some of those people, things would be going good.

It reminded her that there was always someone else.

No matter how optimistic Alice felt, she was always cynical about one thing. No matter how hopeful she was, and how much she believed in, there was always one thing that she didn't believe in.

And that one thing was love.

Alice picked up her dad's acoustic guitar from where it was leaning against the side of the bench she was sitting on. She started playing it and teaching herself to sing only five weeks ago, but, as usual with Alice, she was already entirely dedicated and certain that this was it for her. She was definite about it, and she would never change her mind.

She strummed a G chord and gazed thoughtfully from the strings up to the sky. She moved from the G chord to a G Minor chord.

"I promise," she sung quietly, as she finger-picked each note in the G Minor chord, "that I'll never sing of love, if it does not exist."

For three years, Bella had been an only child. Her mother still had her father's surname, Swan, but, as far as Renee was concerned, she was no longer married. Despite the fact that she was over forty now, Renee spent her nights in clubs and pubs, getting drunk and getting laid; she spent her days waking up with a hangover in someone else's house, and then getting the bus back to her mother's house in time to ignore a half-hearted scolded from her grey-haired, cardigan-clad mother, get a small amount of sleep, and then get changed and do it all again.

So, now at the age of ten, Bella was slowly getting used to barely seeing her mother. She spent her days sitting in her Nan's living room, the room that had scared her when she was younger, but which she now considered her own.

She had learnt a lot in that living room, over the past three years. Even though she was still only young, her personality had been forged strongly in that room, with the sunlight – whether gold with summer or weak yellow with winter – streaming through the net-curtains that hung over the large bay window.

She had decided that her favourite place to sit was on the windowsill of that bay window. She would climb over the back of the sofa, her favourite cushion – the same cushion she had clutched three years previously – held in her left hand.

She had learnt, from her Nan, about books: storybooks, encyclopaedias, classic novels, biographies and autobiographies... Day after day, year after year, her Nan had taken Bella's hand and led her to bookshelf where thousands of old, dusty books with strong-smelling, yellowed pages and creased spines were piled, crammed together, each encasing a fragment of her Nan's life.

Bella's favourite of all these books were the classic romance novels. She adored books like Anne of Green Gables, Wuthering Heights, and Jane Eyre; from the ancient pages of these old books and from the stories and snippets of wisdom her Nan gave her, Bella thought she had learnt all about the world.

Bella, unlike her sister, was wending her curious, intrigued and trusting way through a world where love was real; where love was sweet, where love was strong, where love hurt, where love cured. She lived in an old-fashioned paradise.

She knew nothing of living as a teenager in the modern world; she knew nothing of being the type of person who is cynical, and who hides behind a laugh, a joke, and a song.

She knew nothing of her sister, whose life was so soon to spiral into a story so much like the stories that Bella adored.

_Five years later..._

She met him in a music shop. She saw his eyes over the top of the unbalanced, messy pile of music books. She was searching, on her dad's advice, for a book that contained the notation of Beatles' songs, because he was into classic rock, she was a budding, rather talented singer and guitarist.

He, the person whose eyes Alice saw, was looking for the same book, except for a different reason. She snuck another glance at him over the top of a book entitled _Jam with... Gary Moore_. She saw, again, his narrow, dark brown eyes under his straight, slightly unruly, blonde eyelashes. She saw his straw-coloured hair which brushed just above his shoulders; she saw how a lock of his dry, thin hair curled past his cheekbones.

And he saw her looking, and smirked, though he barely looked up from the book he was examining.

She felt her stomach churn in the familiar way, as though sparks were jumping up from it into her chest. She was no stranger to physical attraction, and no stranger to chatting up strangers. She knew how to play the game; she'd learnt a long time ago that, if you're quite and shy, you seem vulnerable. And Alice didn't want to be vulnerable, not like her dad, so she lowered the book she was holding and said,

"What are you smirking at?"

He looked up, his smirk almost widening to a grin. "I don't know," he replied, his voice holding laughter, "but it's smirking back."

It was such a childish comeback that she laughed out loud. "Where'd you pick that one up? Your seven year old brother?"

"He's nine actually," he replied, totally seriously.

"Like that's such a massive difference."

He smirked again, just the corner of his mouth twisting up, and shrugged casually. Then his eyes moved to Alice's knee, which was visible because she was wearing a short, purple skirt, with a look of concern on his face.

"Hey, did you graze your knee? Y'know, when you fell from heaven?"

Alice looked from him to her knee, and then made a big show of sniffing the air.

"What's that smell... smells like..." she pretended to ponder for a bit before saying, "Oh, yeah, cheese!"

He laughed, ruffled his hand with one hand, and mimicked her sniffing action.

"Y'know what I can smell? Smart, and sexy," he said, raising one eyebrow.

"Those things don't have a sm-" Alice started.

"And coffee. I can smell coffee; must be from that great new coffee shop that's just opened round the corner. Hey, tell you what, let's meet there next Saturday. I hear they do a great chocolate fudge cake."

Alice stared at him for a few seconds, stunned. No one had ever asked her out that soon after meeting her. She didn't even know his name, but she smiled and nodded.

"Sure, yeah. That'd be great."

"Awesome," he replied. "Give me your hand."

Frowning, she placed her hand palm up on top of the tottering pile of books. He pulled a blue biro from his jeans pocket and wrote something on her palm, before putting the pen away, waving casually, and sauntering out of the shop.

Alice pulled her hand back, and saw, scrawled in a jagged, small handwriting:

_Jasper: 07906 865 435_

She smiled.

A/N:

I think I'll leave it there. Maybe I'll do a bonus chapter at the end of this fic, maybe continuing this particular story, if you guys want that. Maybe I could do what I've done with the first chapter, and start a whole new fic to go more into detail...

Okay, please review.


	7. Author's Note

Author's Note:

I'll keep this short: I'm done. I'm not going to be writing any of my twilight fanfics anymore, because I'm not interested in twilight anymore.

Basically, this is what happened: I'd already been tiring of twilight for a while – in fact, the fanfics had been my only link to the whole thing for a long time – and then I went to see Deathly Hallows Part 2 with my family. And I became obsessed. I remembered what I'd been missing for so long, and I went back to my childhood and Harry Potter. I went home and I re-read the whole series. I think I was half-way through Chamber of Secrets when I decided that I was going to become more obsessed with this than I ever was with twilight. And that's really saying a lot.

So, I write Harry Potter fanfics now, on my new account, ravenclawhalfbloodprince. I don't know if any of you will want to, but if you do, check out my new stuff. I'm also going to move some of my one-shots to my new accounts at some point.

That's about it. Sorry if you really liked this stuff or anything. Thanks for reading, and reviewing if you did. All of that really did mean a lot to me, honest. But I'm moving on to a Harry Potter era now. So, have fun reading whatever you read, guys.

Bye.


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